You may, perhaps, already know that the word ‘honeymoon’ stems from the old Germanic custom of drinking hydromel or liquid honey for 30 days following the wedding feast. But would it ever have occurred to you that the unlikely source of the word ‘school’ is ‘schole’ – the Greek word for leisure? Or that the word ‘tee-total’ was literally spoused by a stammer? The stutterer being one Joseph Turner of Preston, who, at an anti-alcohol rally in 1833 vowed, with more conviction than coherence that “nothing but t-t-t-t-t-total abstinence will do…”
Some of the words and phrases we use originated in the oddest ways. Take, for example, the story of why a Hollywood Motion Picture Academy Award is called an Oscar. The term Oscar was coined by a secretary’s stray remark that the expression of the bronze-gilt statuette, annually awarded since 1927 for outstanding performance in the motion picture industry, reminded her of her uncle Oscar. Immortal words, these, and undoubtedly the stuff of which history is made.
The phrase “to steal someone’s thunder” is not meteorological in origin, but was coined from bitter experience by John Dennis, major 18th century critic, very minor playwright, and inventor of the theatrical thunder sheet. Dennis was understandably angry at the fact that while the theatres belittled his plays, “they steal my thunder”. And thereby hangs a phrase.
India has contributed a lot to the growth of the English language. There are numerous words and concepts in the language of Indian origin, adapted (primarily during the zenith of the British Raj) from the languages and customs of the country to expand and supplement everyday English speech. The word ‘pariah’, for instance, with its current implication of an outcast, is derived from the Tamil ‘pariyar’ or drummer, one of the hereditary callings of those beyond the pale of the Hindu social structure. The prevalent custom in British India of shunting wives and families off to the cool hills during the hot season engendered the epithet ‘grass widow’ for a woman temporarily separated from her spouse. The original juggernaut – a word now used to evoke images of some titanic, irresistible force, crushing everything in its path – was the Hindu God Vishnu (Jaggannath) whose image was installed in a chariot 45 feet high, borne aloft on 16 massive wheels, each nearly 7 feet in girth. And as this vast structure rumbled by, devotees would cast themselves beneath its wheels, in the belief that such a death would ensure their going to heaven.
The word ‘peccavi’ also has an Indian connection – though in a different way. ‘Peccavi’ is Latin for “I have sinned’. And when General Charles Napier seized the Indian state of Sind in 1843 and reported his victory in a terse communiqué, this unfortunate word became the subject of one of history’s most outrageous puns. The communiqué said: ‘Peccavi’ – ‘I have Sind.’
